Wednesday, 17 February 2016

Benefits are bad? So pay people more, then (bit of a reprise).

I've gone over this topic before but after recently seeing comments about people 'struggling' to pay the "living wage (ha)"(I will from now on - or until I forget - be calling it that in full, in bold italics) it rattled my inner angry person again.Sweeping statement alert: employers vote Tory. I know that's not wholly true but big businesses and wealthy individuals who employ lots of people tend to not only vote Tory but also throw money at them. And as we know, the Tory way is to get rid of all benefits, or at least as much as humanly (or inhumanely; they're not fussy) as possible. Their donors want that too, because they want it to be fine to pay very little tax and they don't want poor and disabled people around who might not pay much tax themselves and might even need some support so they can have a roof over their heads and three meals a day. These Tory business folk also want rock-bottom wages for their staff too, and that means big benefits to supplement incomes which aren't enough to live off.

Those two things don't go together. You can't have an economy in the developed world where everything except a workforce is expensive.

If you're a small business and you're struggling, then that's probably because customers and potential customers haven't got enough spare cash to spend on your products and services.

When you're in big business, you can either pay your staff more, or you pay more tax to pay for benefits to top them up.